Raphael John-Lall

South Ko­rea’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Dongil Oh boasts that while South Ko­rea is a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing pow­er­house, T&T is al­so an eco­nom­ic hub in the Caribbean and both coun­tries must use their re­spec­tive strengths to de­vel­op greater eco­nom­ic co-op­er­a­tion.

He al­so point­ed out that South Ko­rea, which is a high­ly de­vel­oped mar­ket econ­o­my, is the leader in sev­er­al fields in­clud­ing semi­con­duc­tors, au­to­mo­biles, heavy in­dus­try, ship­build­ing and en­er­gy in­dus­tries.

“Through glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, Ko­re­an com­pa­nies are ac­tive­ly seek­ing to en­ter for­eign mar­kets. There­fore, I am sure that to­day’s ex­change will lead to ex­changes be­tween the two busi­ness mar­kets. T&T is recog­nised as an eco­nom­ic hub of the Caribbean re­gion with an an­nu­al Gross Do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) ex­ceed­ing US$28 bil­lion which holds great po­ten­tial for de­vel­op­ment. Most re­cent­ly, with the open­ing of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, this will ex­po­nen­tial­ly es­ca­late the vol­ume of man­u­fac­tured goods that can be ex­port­ed through­out the Amer­i­c­as, Eu­ro­pean and Ko­re­an mar­kets,” he said.

Oh spoke last Mon­day at a we­bi­nar host­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTSCI) on do­ing busi­ness with South Ko­rea as part of its Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries.

He not­ed that next year South Ko­rea and T&T will cel­e­brate the 40th an­niver­sary of diplo­mat­ic ties.

He re­mind­ed the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that last year South Ko­rea’s Prime Min­is­ter Han Duck-Su vis­it­ed T&T to at­tend the 45th Cari­com Sum­mit.

“This was the first time a South Ko­re­an prime min­is­ter vis­it­ed the Caribbean re­gion. On this his­toric event, he pre­sent­ed strate­gies to bol­ster South Ko­re­an and Caribbean col­lab­o­ra­tion and vowed to in­crease fund­ing to the re­gion by spend­ing five times the cur­rent amount to US$3 mil­lion each year. To add to this mile­stone, we al­so had a largescale busi­ness del­e­ga­tion. Ko­rea has proven its will­ing­ness to co­op­er­ate with T&T busi­ness in the ar­eas of ship­build­ing, en­er­gy, heavy in­dus­try and in many oth­er sec­tors.”

He gave sta­tis­tics which show that in 2022, South Ko­rea was the tenth largest trad­ing part­ner of T&T and a ma­jor im­porter of T&T’s com­modi­ties among the Asian coun­tries, mak­ing it the num­ber one des­ti­na­tion for T&T’s ex­port­ed goods in Asia.

“Bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween the two coun­tries amount­ed to US$360 mil­lion with a trade sur­plus of US$200 mil­lion in T&T’s favour. Methanol and am­mo­nia are T&T’s main ex­ports to Ko­rea. This sig­ni­fies that there are many op­por­tu­ni­ties for trade de­spite the ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­tance be­tween the two coun­tries. I hope that this trade part­ner­ship will move be­yond trade and there will be an in­crease for Ko­re­an com­pa­nies which are com­mit­ted to work with busi­ness­es in T&T. ”

Grow­ing trade

The TTC­SI’s CEO Mark Edghill, who al­so gave re­marks at the we­bi­nar, said one of the cor­ner­stones of the trade re­la­tions be­tween South Ko­rea and T&T is the Cari­com-Ko­rea Par­tial Scope Agree­ment on Trade, Eco­nom­ic, and Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion. This agree­ment, which has been in ef­fect since Ju­ly 1994, has fa­cil­i­tat­ed trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion by elim­i­nat­ing tar­iffs and non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers, cre­at­ing a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for the ex­change of goods and ser­vices.

He re­ferred to da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade which showed that in 2022, T&T ex­port­ed rough­ly US$288 mil­lion worth of prod­ucts to South Ko­rea.

He said the bulk of that came from or­gan­ic chem­i­cals worth US$186 mil­lion, fish and crus­taceans, mol­luscs and oth­er aquat­ic in­ver­te­brates worth US$1.9 mil­lion.,alu­mini­um and ar­ti­cles there­of worth US$316,000, iron and steel worth US$275,000 and min­er­al fu­els, min­er­al oils and prod­ucts of their dis­til­la­tion; bi­tu­mi­nous sub­stances; min­er­al wax­es worth US$134,000.

In that same year, South Ko­rea ex­port­ed US$59 mil­lion to T&T, the Com­trade da­ta shows, he said.

Among South Ko­rea’s top ex­ports to T&T in 2022 were ve­hi­cles, oth­er than rail­way or tramway rolling stock and parts and ac­ces­sories there­of worth US$30 mil­lion, iron and steel prod­ucts worth US$12 mil­lion, nu­clear re­ac­tors, boil­ers, ma­chin­ery and me­chan­i­cal ap­pli­ances and parts there­of worth US$3.56 mil­lion, to­bac­co and man­u­fac­tured to­bac­co sub­sti­tutes; prod­ucts, whether or not con­tain­ing nico­tine worth US$3.06 mil­lion and plas­tics and ar­ti­cles there­of worth US$1.48 mil­lion.

He not­ed that T&T and South Ko­rea’s part­ner­ship goes be­yond the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Be­yond the en­er­gy sec­tor, both of our coun­tries have recog­nised the po­ten­tial for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and growth in trade in ser­vices. Col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts have been un­der­way to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties in tourism in­fra­struc­ture, soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, cre­ative ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion, and en­vi­ron­men­tal in­vest­ments. The cos­met­ics in­dus­try rep­re­sents a sub­stan­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty for mar­ket ex­pan­sion and eco­nom­ic growth.”

He re­ferred to da­ta from Sta­tista.com which high­lights the po­ten­tial in this sec­tor, pro­ject­ing the beau­ty and per­son­al care mar­ket in South Ko­rea to achieve rev­enues of US$14.84 bil­lion in 2024.

Fur­ther­more, he said this mar­ket is an­tic­i­pat­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence a steady growth at a Com­pound An­nu­al Growth Rate (CA­GR) of 2.42 per­cent from 2024 to 2028.

He said in T&T, the beau­ty and per­son­al care in­dus­try is a ma­jor em­ploy­er, pro­vid­ing jobs for over 30,000 in­di­vid­u­als.

“This sec­tor stands to gain im­mense­ly from col­lab­o­ra­tive knowl­edge-shar­ing ini­tia­tives with South Ko­rea, known for its ad­vanced and in­no­v­a­tive cos­met­ics in­dus­try. We are ea­ger to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of such part­ner­ships and look for­ward to in-depth dis­cus­sions on cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

He al­so point­ed out that more that half of South Ko­rea’s GDP comes from the ser­vices sec­tor and that is some­thing for T&T to strive for.

“The com­mit­ment to strength­en trade re­la­tions is re­flect­ed in the on­go­ing dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween our coun­tries for the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Pro­mo­tion and Pro­tec­tion of In­vest­ments Agree­ment. This agree­ment, once fi­nalised, is an­tic­i­pat­ed to pro­vide a more se­cure and con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for in­vestors from both T&T and South Ko­rea, fos­ter­ing in­creased busi­ness con­fi­dence and fa­cil­i­tat­ing greater in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.”